A comparative look at Machine Translation

Machine translation has to go a longway before it can become an established way of doing translations. Recently while reading a news item in Japanese I tried out my own translation skills learnt a long time ago and tried to see how it compares with machine translation. Here are some results. Some did not recognize the language and Google recognised it as Chinese with all the Hiragana / Katakana characters left in place with only Chinese characters translated into English and to get an all English translation the language was set to Japanese.

Original News item March 21, 01:00 AM Japan Time

北澤防衛大臣は、防衛省で記者会見し、福島第一原子力発電所について、１９日に続いて、上空から表面温度を測定した結果、３号機の格納容器の上を除いて、１号機から６号機まで、いずれも１００度未満で、専門家の分析で、使用済み燃料を保管するプールに水が入っていることを裏付ける貴重なデータになるという見方が示されたことを明らかにしました。

Bing Translator:

Members expressed the view that Kitazawa, Defense Minister at the Ministry of Defense briefing and Fukushima first nuclear power plant on the 19th followed, from surface temperature measurements taken, except on the containment of no.3 unit aircraft from No. 6 MK until none less than 100 degrees, expert analysis, storing spent fuel pool water contains valuable data to be unveiled.

Google Translation after indicating language as Japanese:

Sawa Kita Defense Minister, the Ministry of Defense press conference about the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station, followed by 19 days, the surface temperature was measured from the sky, except for the containment of Unit 3, Unit 1 6 Unit until, in less than 100 degrees both in expert analysis, it was shown clearly to the view that as valuable data confirms that the water has entered the pool to store spent fuel.

Yahoo- Babelfish:

Defensive Minister of State Kitazawa the reporter interviewed at the defensive ministry, following on the 19th concerning the Fukushima first nuclear power plant, 1 from the machine 6 to the machine, each of them made that the viewpoint that is shown under 100 degrees, with analysis of the specialist, it becomes the valuable data which supports the fact that the water has entered into the pool which keeps the spent fuel, clear the result of measuring surface temperature from the sky, 3 excluding on the Containment Vessel of the machine.

My Traslation :
Japanese Defense Minister Kitazawa at the defense ministry's briefing following the 19th unvieled the results of aerial surface temperature measurements on reactors 1 to 6  at the Fukushima Nuclear Power station. The results of surface measurements indicate that on reactors 1 to 6 were below 100 deg C except directly above the containment vessel of reactor 3. This result according to expert analysts is an important data indicating that water has entered the pool containing the spent fuel  rods.